Cinema Hype

I was an adolescent in the early 1990s, and I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that I devoured the first few of John Grisham’s novels. He was all the rage: all those sexy lawyers doing virtuous things! How could we not love him? Most of those first few novels–A Time to Kill through, say, The Runaway Jury–were eventually made into movies. Ultimately, Grisham sort of faded back into the woodwork, and none of the novels or the movies really stuck with me, except one. That would be The Pelican Brief.

I can’t even really say what attracted me about the book or the movie, but I can take a few guesses: a bookish heroine running from the bad guys, changing haircuts daily and staying just out of the reach of danger, and bonding with a strong-and-silent journalist (Denzel Washington). It was like Alias before there was Alias, and I loved it. My friend Maggie and I watched it all the time–we loved Stanley Tucci, even though he was the bad guy (Khamel the jogger!), and it made me want to check out the French Quarter, because that’s where cool law students go to eat beignets, hang out with Sam Shepard and Cynthia Nixon, and solve environmental crimes. Obviously.

I suspect that I also liked The Pelican Brief because it was one of the first suspense movies I ever saw–to this day, I’m a sucker for innocent but resourceful people running from the bad guys, for a well-timed explosion (”Ms. Shaw, you take my breath away.”), for the relationship between protector and protected. I always loved the scene where Darby is at the riverside plaza, and she’s holding hands with the bad guy (!), and then there are gunshots, and there’s this wide-angle shot of the entire crowd swarming away from Julia Roberts, leaving her alone and spattered with blood. It’s a creepy scene, but it takes place in broad daylight in the middle of a crowd. That scene used to give me goosebumps both because of its violence and because I liked the way it looked. There was a lot to like about The Pelican Brief, even as it was violent and a little scary. It was suspenseful, but not too suspenseful; it was violent, but not too violent; it was complicated, but not too complicated. It was my gateway movie for suspense films.

Shoot. Now I need to go re-watch.